The Look

There’s something beautiful in the art of claymation, that technique of animation that uses clay characters and sets with stop motion recording. It’s a style that is criminally underused, despite almost always winning universal praise for its craftsmanship and creativity. In recent years, however, there had been a steady flow of stop motion, claymation films, building on from staples such as ‘Wallace & Gromit’ and ‘Coraline’ with fresh stories, including ‘The House’, ‘Kubo and the Two Strings’, ‘Isle of Dogs’, and Guillermo Del Toro’s ‘Pinocchio’. ‘The Look' is a similarly stunning film in this art style, though perhaps it lacks the same punch as the aforementioned features.

The film begins with the slow movement of rain trickling down the window. The movement is even slower because this is claymation, but this does not make it any less an impressive image. There is an elderly man in bed and a woman, whom we presume to be his wife, sat in a chair looking out at the rain. The attention to detail to crave out the wrinkles in each of their faces is very striking, and an early indication of the strength of craftsmanship that went into making the film.

It is with a tenderness that the rest of the events unfold. As the man rises from bed with vigour and enthusiasm that defies his age, he goes to check on his wife, who sits, eyes unblinking wide open facing the window. When the man realises what has happened he drops things, and knocks into them in shock and anger, distraught over what has happened. We believe these emotions because we recognise ourselves in the man, and reflect that we would act the same in that situation.

The story is human and moving, a portrait of age and love and death, three things naturally ingrained in the human condition. The director captures them all in this eloquent portrait of humanity and all our emotions, and indeed, at times it does feel almost as though you are watching the figures in a painting move, such is the artistry involved. The bedroom is just as detailed as the characters, full of little objects and marks that have ben so artfully created that you can only wonder how much time and effort was put into making something so spectacularly real.

At times there is a certain lag in the animation, yet this is a trivial issue that can easily be glossed past when considering the sheer level of talent and skill that went into making the picture. You only wish that perhaps we could have known the characters more, in particular the wife, yet, because this film deals with such human themes part of its beauty is in the simplicity.

‘The Look’ is both intricate and simple, melding the two into a phenomenal piece of art, that makes an excellent case for further use of claymation as an animated style.